There are too many pocket-picking opportunities in the modern version of religion for the virtues of enlightened people to rescue society. Politicians will not let us acknowledge that our land, our governments, and our physical well-being are all a smelly latrine that no one wants to use. All the fresh graduates with doctorates in myriad fields have not convinced themselves that honesty is a real thing, nor that poor treatment of migrants (under any name or religious pretext) is utterly disqualifying and without virtue. Even some of the most dedicated religious people are not convinced that love is the supreme attribute that humans can participate in. Salvation is the gift that best defines love. Monotheism, perfect obedience to rules and regulations, the observance of days and weeks and months and years, are all useless for experiencing salvation.
Love and war in the Davidide dynasty
Some people conveniently forget that Jesus is the king of love. His great ancestor David was a king whose heart led him to care for his enemies. All hate is homicidal. It is not only a Black and White reality, not only a citizen and foreigner thing, it is also a human race issue.
Instead of teaching our children to love others we set them off on a journey of acquiring property, an insensitive grasping for significance and power over others.
Even many preachers of the Gospel of righteousness take pride in exhorting people to seek personal comfort and wealth and thereby ensnare their souls with a sense of superiority. If you have this world’s goods you are one of the blessed. You have God’s unconditional love. It was not unconditional love that brought grace, faith and salvation.
You have to realize that preachers like Osteen (one of the bosses of niggling theology and Pharisee righteousness) are incapable of interpreting the gospel, so they preach triumphalism, self-help, self-esteem, and earthly rewards. They cannot expound the virtues of redeeming grace. They are more comfortable with neo-Pharisee righteousness and Mammon.
Saving myself from this crooked generation
I won’t bother giving my body to be burnt, nor offer mself up as an assassin with suicidal intent, nor yet live in a silo of self love, thinking that self-preservation is the best example of love. The love that saves is the one we receive as God’s gift. No one is buying that 13-dollar coin doctrine about loving God by being obedient to all his instructions. It is curious how a reach for the supreme kind of love exposes the abject absence of love. The leaders of the large groups of believers are not lovers of humanity; people follow them in loving themselves and their tradition. It is surely a peculiar nation that cannot bring itself to love others like God loves the world.

